Well last Saturday my beloved husband finally got round to adding the little something to the front garden that I've had in mind since we moved here.

Going back some way to the 'More Clematis Please' post in May 2006, I'd always thought it would be nice to have a line of posts linked by two levels of rope to enable us to grow more climbers up the posts and eventually along the ropes to kill two birds with one stone by indulging my love of clematis and also prettying up the view from my sewing room of the neighbours boring, brick boundary wall.

Rather than cementing the posts in and reducing the amount of plant sustaining soil in the border he opted for metpost spikes instead

Everything was progressing smoothly until the final post was being hammered in

Nigel rushed to the front door shouting frantically for my attention

The post spike had just gone straight into

a gas main!

So as you can imagine a job that was almost finished developed into an afternoon of disruption to both us and our neighbours as not one, not two but eventually five gas men in four separate vehicles turned up and blocked the entire cul de sac

The gas main turned out to supply our next door neighbours and should never have been routed across our front garden so of course they were without gas all afternoon rather than us. Thank goodness she hadn't just put a joint of meat or a fruit cake into the oven

Fortunately the gas men were able to repair the main with a minimum of disruption to both my plants and the newly tarmaced drive

And most luckily Nigel had positioned the post directly over the gas main and hit it square in the middle - had he been an inch or so to the one side of this he would have done a double whammy and caught the electric supply as well - now that might have had a very different, possibly explosive outcome

Once the men had completed the job he was able to finish the last post and here we are awaiting the climbers - a job for next weekend I feel :o)

Then - next job - sorting out the bombsite that is the back garden and turning this into an Italian style courtyard - just hope it doesn't take as long to complete as those posts in the front garden!

Who in the dickens name puts a gas main and electric cables RIGHT next to each other!! And surely both should have been in some sort of conduit! I'm so glad it all worked out and that the damage was minimal...like you said it could have been a lot worse.

All that aside, it looks like it will be wonderful when the clematis grows and covers up the brick wall...keep us posted.